


hot2touch

by groundcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2020-09-24 10:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20356840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/groundcover/pseuds/groundcover
Summary: Felix has been repressing some things for his entire life. Dimitri is his childhood friend. Can I make it any more obvious?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> #dmfx2k19 !!!!!!
> 
> posting for yao, who has been screeching and begging me to feed her for the past week. alt summary: claude came to the monastery, saw felix and dimitri, and said 'screw those two in particular, hey hilda, let’s ruin their lives' (ty doe)

Felix kissed Dimitri before everybody else wanted to, before Dimitri was gorgeous, when he had enormous moon eyes and a page-boy haircut that made him look like a consumptive child living through the Great Depression. 

Felix had thought —he doesn’t remember what he thought. Probably that Dimitri was really cute, and serious in a way that Felix respected, as a spotty pre-teen. Dimitri had lived down the street for as long as Felix could remember. Their families brought them home from the same ICU on the same day, Felix enormous and squalling, and Dimitri feeble and doe-eyed, having fought off a firing squad of fevers and diseases for the two months it had taken Felix to enter the world. 

“Maybe you made me get better,” Dimitri said, in that earnest way he said embarrassing things. 

“That isn’t how science works,” Felix said, but felt privately pleased at the thought. 

Felix can’t remember how it happened, or what made that sleepover different than the others, or which ominous switch clicked in his heart that made him clutch the lapels of Dimitri’s pajama top and kiss him. Only that the kiss was horrible, and Dimitri had said in a gasping voice, “Felix, I like you.” 

Being twelve is a terrible thing. Felix remembers clearly why they broke up, because Felix had said, “I’m bored.” 

And Dimitri said, in a tremulous voice, “Of me?” 

Felix had actually been talking about the board game they were playing, which they hadn’t bothered to read the rules for, and were aimlessly rolling the dice and moving the pieces at will. It was a sticky-hot summer, the kind where the fan only moved the air around, and Felix was annoyed. 

“Yes,” he snapped, and Dimitri had solemnly lifted and tilted the board so that all the pieces cascaded gently into the box, folded up the board, placed it back in the box, and went home without saying a word. 

That night, Felix lay awake and tried to quash the creeping fear that things would not be all right, that Ingrid would show up, with Dimitri fruitlessly pulling her back, to call Felix all the mean names in the world and burn his house down. That Dimitri would cry, all snotty and ugly the way he only did when it was someone else hurting. 

The reality was much worse. Dimitri met Felix at the bus stop the next morning, and he said, “Good morning, Felix. I hope everything is okay. And Ingrid already asked me to be her boyfriend. That’s okay, right?” He was wearing the button-down shirt patterned with tiny embroidered sharks that Felix’s mom had given him for his last birthday. 

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Felix said, and it was like the past two months had never happened at all. 

*

Dimitri had always been smaller than Felix when they were little, all the way through middle school until they were both sixteen, when Dimitri practically overnight shot upwards and outwards. He also got a haircut that wasn’t a bob, that gave him floppy bangs that he wore seriously, like he did everything else. 

Felix woke up one day and realized that Dimitri had effectively and most definitely become someone that could be loosely defined as “a catch.” Dimitri met this declaration with the steadfast consideration that he gave everything else, like Felix’s offhand comment needed to be carefully inspected from all angles and quarantined for scientific observation. 

“I see,” Dimitri said, like he was a storybook prince, and not a teenager in a crowded cafeteria, eating something that only somewhat resembled spaghetti and more-resembled a dense brick of tomato paste. 

Felix threw his own brick into the trash, and pilfered Sylvain’s cookie. “I don’t even know why I’m talking about this, just forget I said anything.” 

Dimitri frowned, cutely, and inched his hand across the linoleum. Felix placed a quarter of the cookie in his open palm. 

*

Dimitri had somehow become more beautiful by the time they started college. Felix tried his best to ignore this, because they really weren’t even friends anymore. They still lived on the same street, and Dimitri came over to sit on Felix’s porch swing when he was passing by, and sent the occasional text. But largely Dimitri’s days were lent in service of new girlfriends, and boyfriends, who leaned into Dimitri’s broad shoulder at lunchtimes and pretended to be in love with him so that they could see themselves, resplendent, on his arm. He was too nice. Felix knew this well. 

Felix had wondered, briefly, whether he should ask Dimitri to be his roommate—and then quickly remembered that he would be signing on a third person, who he already loathed on principle. Garreg Mach turned out to have single rooms only, and Felix let all thoughts about Dimitri run down the drain. 

It went without saying that the drain backed up, immediately, when Dimitri showed up in Felix’s doorway on moving day, bottom lip stiff. 

“What,” Felix said, trying to shove a pile of pants into a dresser drawer without creasing them. “Get dumped?” 

“Yes,” Dimitri said, solemnly, and immediately started breaking Felix’s things. 

“Stop,” Felix said, feeling an oncoming headache. As a child Dimitri had accidentally ripped Felix’s shirts, put an elbow through the Fraldarius’ basement drywall, wrenched a stapler in the first grade so hard it had snapped in two, and broken Felix’s finger by holding onto it too tightly while they were watching an illicitly obtained horror movie past their bedtime, all while sporting a physique that was more toothpick than human. Now that Dimitri was 6’ 2” and a jock, it had only gotten worse. 

“Sorry,” Dimitri said, and put the crinkled photo of Felix and Glenn down carefully on Felix’s new desk. 

Felix sighed. “All moved in?” He gave up on the pants, and sat on the edge of his bed, so he could only see the blurry edge of Dimitri’s face in his peripheral vision. 

“Yes,” Dimitri said again, and sighed, shifting his weight. The bedframe made a distressed creaking noise. Felix counted to five silently in his head. 

“Garreg Mach is,” Dimitri said, right on five, “somewhere I believe things will change.” 

Felix privately thought the chapel service was overkill and that the classrooms were excessively drafty, but Dimitri had just been broken up with, even though he never really liked any of these people that much. So Felix allowed Dimitri to have dinner with him, where Dimitri was promptly drawn into a conversation about the weather by the cute boy the next table over, and ended up leaving alone when Dimitri inevitably took a long walk with the cute boy and found boyfriend number ten. 

When he got back to his empty room, Felix finished putting away the last of his things, and collapsed onto the bed feeling like this was the start of another long chapter of his life. It was hard to stop thinking about Dimitri this night, having listened to an hour of him commenting on the grass, the trees, mild observations about the students around them, during that one single hour Dimitri’s attention had been solely focused on Felix, and not on his forever-changing other. 

*

Felix tried to avoid Dimitri at Garreg Mach, which was easy, because no matter how many times he was dumped and picked up again, Dimitri was a good boyfriend. Felix was a terrible friend, so it made avoiding see him all the easier. 

“Have you seen Dimitri lately?” Sylvain said, when he dropped into the seat next to Felix at lectures, cradling an enormous plastic drink cup. It was filled with what looked like moss. 

“Are you drinking that?” Felix whispered, because lecture started fifteen minutes ago. 

“It’s green juice,” Sylvain said, offended, and took an enormous swallow that made Felix shudder. “Answer the question.” 

“No,” Felix said, and glared at him. 

“Oh, interesting,” Sylvain said, which was infuriating. He had somehow never managed to stop making Felix angry in the entire time they had known each other. 

Felix aggressively took notes for the next ten minutes in blessed peace. Then Sylvain said, “Claude’s having a party.” 

Was Felix in a horrible teen drama? He hated Sylvain, and whoever Claude was. “No thanks,” Felix said, and resisted the urge to jab Sylvain in the ribs with his pen. 

“Suit yourself,” Sylvain said, and left Felix alone until the end of lecture, when he frog-marched Felix to the quad to force Felix into taking photos of Sylvain in front of the statue of Saint Seiros. 

After they finished, and Sylvain started making noise about buying food, Felix escaped mercifully to the gym, where he ran lap after lap and tried not to think about Dimitri too much. It was hard. There had never before been a time in Felix’s life where Dimitri wasn’t within twenty feet, the span of a classroom away, just across the street, falling asleep in Felix’s bed while Felix crept into the kitchen to spirit cookies upstairs. Garreg Mach was the first time Felix had ever looked around and found Dimitri’s blond head missing, where Dimitri could be doing and seeing anyone without Felix knowing at all. 

Felix decided he liked it.

*

In the following months, Felix found it was a passing fantasy that Dimitri wouldn’t follow him everywhere. He was just—handsome in a way that defied all odds. Nobody and nothing was impervious to the concentrated force of his face. It punched through the admittedly paper-thin shell Felix had put up around himself with the force of a ten-ton tractor. 

The girl who spent all her time napping behind him in his differential equations class nudged him with her foot. He glared at her over his shoulder, incredulous. 

“Hi,” she said, dragging out the vowel. She wasn’t even pretending to take notes. All she had with her was a tiny handbag. 

Felix turned around to face front. 

“Rude, I was going to say, you’ve done the third problem wrong. Integration error.” 

Her voice was grating. But she was right, Felix found, annoyed. He turned around again. 

“My name is Hilda.” 

“Felix,” Felix said, staring at her waist-length pink hair. 

“Don’t go thinking I’m great at math,” Hilda said, widening her eyes. “I got the answers from Lysithea.” 

“Sure,” Felix said, “Thanks anyway.” 

“So,” Hilda said, tucking a strand of pink hair behind her ear, “You know Dimitri, right?” 

Felix regarded her. Was she dating him? He had to stop his lip from curling meanly. He had never been friends with any of Dimitri’s partners, but he at least maintained a veneer of civility. 

“Oh, stop making that face. I’m not interested in him. Well, I am. He’s my friend,” Hilda said. 

This stopped Felix up short. Dimitri was notoriously terrible at making friends, which was why Felix had been his best friend for his entire life. He had a sort of glaze about him that made it difficult to get past the layer of social nicety that acquaintances had, if someone hadn’t fallen first for how gorgeous he was. 

“Really,” Felix said, reassessing Hilda. 

“Really,” Hilda said. “He mentioned you.” 

Felix shrugged. It was hard and a little painful to think about what Dimitri thought about Felix. He settled for an obliging tilt of his head, and felt immensely grateful that the professor hurtled through the door at the same moment, shouting an apology and asking for the homework. 

After class, Hilda yanked on the back of his hoodie to stop him from leaving. “What,” Felix hissed, yanking the fabric out of her hand. 

“Catty much,” Hilda said, fishing a chapstick out of her purse. “Aren’t you curious at least a little bit about me? I’m very interesting, you know. Let’s, I don’t know, review homework answers or something.” 

“If you actually do it,” Felix said, and then pushed past her complaint into the early-afternoon sunshine. 

*

“Dimitri’s made friends,” Felix said to Sylvain later that day, trying to sound casual about it and falling a little bit short. 

“Poor Felix,” Sylvain said, mockingly. Maybe Felix had fallen a lot short. “Who?” 

Sylvain knew everybody and was friends with everybody, but still chose to bother Felix around the clock, which was how Felix knew Sylvain was a terrible person. He derived an unholy glee from riling Felix up, a skill he had honed dutifully since he had tricked Felix into thinking the sandbox was quicksand in kindergarten. 

Felix stole a sip of Sylvain’s drink and gagged. Sylvain laughed. 

“Hilda?” Felix said, after guzzling water for twenty seconds. “Pink hair. In my differential equations class.” 

“I know her,” Sylvain said, predictably, and launched into a five-minute monologue about whatever girl he was seeing lately, and how he had met Hilda, and a manner of other boring things that Felix stopped listening to five words in. 

“Do you ever get tired of listening to yourself speak,” Felix said, flatly, regretting the decision to meet Sylvain, as he often did. 

“Felix, one day you’re going to think you’re so lucky to know me. You’re going to think, I’m so happy to know Sylvain, he’s so interesting and smart and handsome. Wish I could get myself a guy like that,” Sylvain said. 

Felix, stared at him across the table, revolted. “I should have deferred enrollment for a year, so that you would be gone by the time I got here.” 

“I’d get held back for you any time,” Sylvain said, tossing his hair in the annoying way he thought was alluring, but was mostly just greasy and disgusting. “Anyway, I know you would never leave Dimitri, so you don’t have to lie.” 

“What?” Felix said, trying not to go cross-eyed with rage. 

“Most of your life is talking about Dimitri. You’d probably die of boredom or something the second you were separated,” Sylvain said, taking an enormous swallow of his nightmare drink. 

“It is not,” Felix said, and tried to think about what he did outside of Dimitri. It wasn’t his fault, they had grown up right next to each other! This was unfair. 

“It is too,” Sylvain said. Felix wanted to reach over and throttle him. “And now he’s made new friends. Don’t die, Felix. I’ll be so sad.” 

“You are annoying and nobody likes you,” Felix said, taking Sylvain’s drink away and throwing it in the trash on his way out. 

“I was done with it! Thanks!” Sylvain called. Felix flipped him the bird. 

*

Everyone around Felix had assured him, many times, that it was normal to be homesick. Felix didn’t feel homesick, at least not for his parents, or the quiet street that he had lived on his entire life. He didn’t feel homesick so much as restless. He felt it most acutely at the end of every day, after each day’s series of classes had been attended and meals eaten, and he was walking back towards his room. A sense of wanting to burst into a run, towards something he couldn’t quite grasp in the distance. 

He wondered what Dimitri was doing, and what he would say, if Felix had words to put to the feeling, and somehow managed to say so. He couldn’t imagine, which was strange in itself, that there were parts of Dimitri that Felix couldn’t construct in his mind, because he didn’t know them. 

Felix supposed it was what people had warned him about, in the end. 


	2. Chapter 2

Lysithea was 5’ 1”, looked about thirteen years old, and talked like she had swallowed every single book she had ever laid eyes on whole and could recite it with perfect clarity. A real Matilda, Felix thought, watching her produce three mechanical pencils, a black pen, and a pink eraser shaped like a strawberry and place them meticulously in a line next to her notebook. A minute after Hilda said, “This is Lysithea, get along, I’m going to nap, bye,” Lysithea called Felix a child, told him to shut up, and solved one of the five problems they had been assigned. 

“You’re pretty good,” Felix said, scanning her work.

“I know I’m good,” Lysithea said, reshuffling her notes. 

“How old are you, anyway?” Felix asked, unknowingly walking directly into a writhing pile of snakes. 

“Old enough to be in college, thank you very much. You know it’s rude to say things like that, right? Because you’re being really rude,” Lysithea said, bristling. 

“I’m not saying it to be mean,” Felix said, “I’m impressed at how good you are. That’s all.” 

“Oh,” Lysithea said, subsiding somewhat. 

“Well, now that’s out of the way, let’s finish so Hilda can have something to turn in.” 

“You’re still pretty rude,” Lysithea said, but now she was staring at Felix consideringly, twirling her pen. 

“So you’ve said,” Felix said. 

“As long as you know,” Lysithea said, shrugging, and pulled the textbook closer to her. 

*

Felix had spent most of his time in high school and before that with a circle of friends that had drawn so tightly around him that he scarcely remembered anyone else, or ever being alone. During the sticky hot summers of childhood the four of them, Sylvain in the lead, had ridden bikes around the cul-de-sac and through the woods and splashed in the creek and fashioned makeshift fishing rods out of branches and twine. Later, they idled poolside or spent hours trawling their local grocery before hiding away in someone’s basement to play video games or increasingly listless games of Scrabble. During the school-year they sat at the same table every day in the cafeteria, in the corner, Felix’s back against the wall so he had a perfect view of Dimitri and his current partner, exchanging stiff niceties that curdled Felix’s stomach. 

But changing places had changed everything, somehow reversed the forces that had kept them so tightly bound. Felix had more time than he had ever had before in his life. When he woke up he often lay there, staring at the ceiling, wondering at how strange it was to not have Dimitri knocking, politely, at the front door so they could go to school together, and how he didn’t have to straighten his collar so Ingrid wouldn’t take the chance to berate him. 

Sylvain didn’t change much at all. He had already been at Garreg Mach for two years, and now that Felix had come to join him, seemed to view it as a personal mission to entangle their lives as much as possible to Felix’s detriment. 

“Need to talk,” Sylvain had sent him, at two in the morning, replete with winky face. 

Felix checking his phone on the way to class, ignored him. 

Sylvain was waiting for him outside the auditorium when Felix emerged from lecture, shoving earbuds into his ears and trying his best to blend into the chattering wave of students as they surged forth. Sylvain appeared before him anyway, yanking on his ponytail to get Felix’s attention. Felix scowled. 

“Your read receipts are on,” Sylvain said, in his best fake-wounded voice. Felix knew it well. It was terrible to listen to as a ten-year-old, when Sylvain was a whole two years older and in middle school. It was even worse now, that they were both adults. 

“I know,” Felix said, reluctantly taking his earbuds out. 

“Cold,” Sylvain said, and then slung an arm around Felix’s shoulders and steered him around the corner to the garden. 

“What,” Felix snapped, after Sylvain had stared dramatically into the distance for ten seconds. 

“It’s,” Sylvain said, leaning in, “about my love life.” 

Felix tried to stand up. Sylvain had apparently accounted for this, as his hand shot out to force Felix’s shoulder down. Felix shrugged it off, mutinously, wishing he had lasers for eyes and could burn Sylvain’s limbs off. 

“Felix, please, I’m your best friend, hear me out. Remember how I gave you the rest of my drink a week ago?”

Felix did not even bother rebutting any of this obvious lie. “Shut up. I’m leaving, I have work to do.” 

“But you’re a freshman,” Sylvain said, dodging Felix’s attempted jab. Then he said, quieter, “It’s about Ingrid.” 

Felix could feel the headache gathering behind his forehead, the ominous quiet of an insect cease-fire before a rainstorm. He stared at Sylvain, who had suddenly realized he had unmasked himself and was valiantly pasting on his usual horrible expression to recover. 

“If you’re bad to Ingrid, she will kill you. And whatever part of you that isn’t killed, I’ll do it myself,” Felix said, and then stalked off, just as the sky opened up. 

*

Throughout high school, Felix and Dimitri had each played a string of sports, but Felix had run cross-country alone, and found he really liked it. Since starting college, he ran even more, in enormous loops around campus to avoid anyone he knew. 

He was running to clear his head when he ran, literally, into Claude von Riegan. 

“Watch it,” Felix snapped, from where he was lying on the ground in a sweaty pile. His hair had come undone, and it felt like all of it was plastered in sticky strands to his forehead. 

“Sorry, sorry,” the boy said, and offered Felix a hand. 

Felix’s hand was a swamp. He stood up on his own. The boy shrugged, seemingly unoffended. 

“Wait, are you Felix?” 

Felix ground his teeth. This was undoubtedly Dimitri-related. He half-expected said friend to appear sheepishly from behind a tree trunk, and introduce this stranger as his new beau. He tolerated this usually, because it was part of being Dimitri’s friend. But it was morning, and Felix had been running and now not only was he not running—he had an enormous dirt stain on his shorts. 

“Yeah,” Felix said, blowing out a breath and trying not to snarl. “Are you dating him, or something?” 

“Ha, no,” the boy said, running a hand through his hair. “Just curious, that’s all. A friend. I’m Claude.” 

Where was Dimitri finding all of these strange people to befriend? Felix said, “I’m Felix,” and then willed his legs to carry him the remaining distance back to Garreg Mach. 

*

Felix was curious, against his better instincts, about what Dimitri filled his days with. Hilda hinted, with little intent to hide, about what they did at night, how Dimitri couldn’t hold his alcohol and hated the taste of cheap beer, how his voice became lower when he drank. Felix always felt distinctly wrong-footed when conversation turned to this, unable to picture a Dimitri that dropped his affectation and his carefully constructed face. 

Hilda also couldn’t seem to stop herself from talking about Dimitri around Felix. This was understandable, to an extent, that they had Dimitri in common, because what they had in common most definitely was not a genuine interest in mathematics. 

It was hard to picture what Hilda talked about, Claude and Hilda and Dimitri, piled onto a couch or in the dormitory kitchens. Felix could only in his mind’s eye see Dimitri, asleep next to Felix, cheek smashed into Felix’s old sheets patterned with stars, or listening to him seriously across his kitchen counter, hands folded neatly in front of him. 

Eventually, it became clear. 

*

Felix was trudging home from the library, feeling cold and sorry for himself, when his phone buzzed. He sighed, and watched his breath mist into the night. He fished it out from his bag with one stiff hand and felt his spine stiffen up from the dread. Dimitri had called him, three times. It was late, and Dimitri was polite to the point of bordering on rude. He never called past nine, at the very latest. He was still courteous to Felix, like Felix hadn’t wiped Dimitri’s bloody knees when he fell from the swings or stood solemn next to him while Dimitri trembled at his father’s funeral. 

Felix dialed him back, shifting his weight from foot to foot from the cold, but mostly out of anxiousness. 

Dimitri picked up right before Felix had been about to end the attempt. “Felix,” he said, and his voice sounded so far away, and also like he had spent the past four hours while Felix was grimly doing high-level math pounding tequila shots. 

“Dimitri,” Felix said, and hated how it came out slightly panicked, “Where are you?” 

“Felix,” Dimitri said again, and then a burst of noise, blended into a dull static roar over the phone, and then nothing. 

Felix stared at Dimitri’s name on his phone. The profile picture was a very old photo of Dimitri when he still had his page-boy cut, frowning at Felix. He couldn’t escape the suspicion that without him noticing, Dimitri had undergone a third transformation, into someone Felix knew only in memory. 

He was probably okay. He was enormous, and had friends Felix didn’t know, and did things Felix didn’t do. By the time Felix reached his room, he had cast Dimitri out of his head entirely, and was instead thinking with increasing agony about the looming threat of Lagrange mechanics, only to find Dimitri, curled in a sad pile on Felix’s doorstep. 

Felix’s heart did something strange. His chest felt tight, watching Dimitri push his cheek into the wood. It was so cold. He was going to catch pneumonia, or bronchitis, or any number of equally annoying diseases, that would make him sniffle and look pathetic. He was so dumb. And where were his friends? 

Felix crouched down, so that he was eye-level with his horrible, exasperating, dead-drunk idiot, and tried to shake him awake. Dimitri snuffled, and tried to burrow into Felix’s hand like a heat-seeking missile. 

Felix gave up, unlocked his door, and dragged Dimitri over the step by the armpits. He was snoring gently. Felix had never heard him snore before. It was disconcerting. Felix had no idea what to do with him, and settled for dragging the rug over him in a makeshift blanket. Felix turned to go to bed, and then paused, considering—and then stuffed one of Felix’s pillows underneath Dimitri’s head so he wouldn’t accidentally smash himself to death on the floor overnight, before crawling into his own bed with a sigh of relief. He fell asleep instantly. 

He woke up the next morning and blearily threw the covers off, yawning, when he suddenly remembered Dimitri. Felix froze, and chanced a look, to find that Dimitri was still passed out, and stunk of cheap beer. Hilda had called him, and left him three texts: one that said, “Dimitri incoming,” with a series of emoji exclamation marks, “sorry,” with a dizzying number of crying faces, and the last, which Felix squinted at, feeling his blood pressure rise—two tiny emoji men, holding hands. 

Dimitri did look very forlorn in his alcohol-induced slumber. He was probably going to have a terrible hangover. Or maybe not, knowing him. He had a miracle body and a high metabolism. Felix did not feel like good enough of a friend to pour him water, or offer him ibuprofen, so he settled for jabbing Dimitri in the shoulder until he woke up and did whatever he did now in the morning. 

He was groggy. “What,” Dimitri said, his voice scratchy. “Please stop.” 

“Dimitri,” Felix hissed, suddenly angry, crossing his arms. 

“Oh,” Dimitri said, and whimpered when he realized how bright the room was. He rubbed his eyes weakly, like a kitten. Felix refused to be moved by how pathetic he was. 

“Oh,” Felix said, mockingly, and took a deep, calming breath, before it went immediately to waste. “I don’t know why you got shitfaced and fell asleep on my doorstep, but it’s freezing. I was studying. You could have frozen to death. Are you an idiot? I hope the cold killed all of your remaining brain cells.” 

Dimitri didn’t immediately apologize. Felix loomed over him, suddenly concerned. He checked Dimitri’s temperature with the back of his hand. His forehead was hot, and shiny with sweat. 

“You’re burning up. Hope you enjoy that hangover, and this fever! I can’t believe one person can be this dumb,” Felix said, feeling very put out. He was supposed to be running by now. He stomped over to the sink and poured Dimitri water, which Dimitri spilled all over his face. Felix tried not to screech like an angry cat. 

“Felix,” Dimitri whispered, opening his eyes so that Felix was briefly arrested by how blue they were on his sickly pale face. “Sorry.” He sounded so brokenhearted about all of it that Felix, despite all of his banging about, felt moved. 

“Ugh,” Felix said, and stripped Dimitri’s sodden jacket off, threatened him to get into Felix’s bed, watched him carefully while he drank water and took ibuprofen, and left him there to stink and sweat all over Felix’s bedlinen. 

He ran into Hilda at the dining hall later, after Felix had run off most of his frustration in the woods. 

“Is this seat taken,” Hilda said, and dropped into it without waiting for an answer. 

Felix gave her the stink-eye, which Hilda ignored. 

“So,” Hilda started, clasping her hands together. 

“How did you lose him?” Felix interrupted, glaring at her. “He has a fever!” 

“So you do like him. You’re so good at hiding your emotions and pretending they don’t exist Felix, but I know better. You’re a sensitive guy,” Hilda said, spooning an absurd amount of sugar into her tea. 

“What are you even talking about,” Felix said, disgusted. “I’m talking about how you let him fall asleep in freezing weather, outside.” 

“Alright, fine, sorry, you’re right,” Hilda said, unbothered, sipping her tea with her pinky out. 

“I don’t even know why I bother,” Felix said, nastily.

“Don’t be mad, he said he was going to find you, and I knew you were awake. What’s the big deal? What happened?” 

“Nothing,” Felix muttered, and focused intensely on spooning eggs into his mouth. 

“Tell me,” Hilda said, eyes huge. She leaned across the table to stare at him. 

“Nothing happened,” Felix said, which was the truth. 

“Fine,” Hilda said, whipping out her cell phone. “I’ll ask Dimitri.” 

“He’s sleeping, because you got him drunk and let him wander around!” Felix said. 

“How do you know he’s sleeping. I’ll call him right now, just to make sure,” Hilda said, derisively, lifting her phone to her ear. 

“Because he’s in my room,” Felix said, and regretted it instantly at the way Hilda’s mouth opened. 

“What, no,” Hilda said. Felix couldn’t tell if she was pretending to be shocked, and felt annoyed about it. “Felix, why didn’t you just put him in his own room? It’s down the hall.” 

“He’s sick,” Felix said, slowly, so Hilda would know he was being patronizing. 

“He can probably still walk,” Hilda said, batting her eyes innocently. 

“I don’t know, he’s sick!” Felix said, and went to dump his dishes in the return. 

*

When he went to check on Dimitri, turning the key in the door slowly, and opening it gently so it wouldn’t make a noise, Dimitri was still sweaty and deeply asleep. 

Dimitri was frowning in his sleep. Felix tried to remember if Dimitri had frowned in his sleep before, and found he didn’t know. He had never thought to pay attention to it before. 

He checked his temperature. His fever had broken, so Felix rudely shook him awake. 

Dimitri made a disgruntled noise, and then surfaced abruptly into waking with an ease Felix had always envied. He went from dozing to fully awake within the span of a single second, which had served him well during their high school days. 

“Felix,” Dimitri said, blinking and shoving himself up onto his elbows, and then winced. 

Felix looked at him, and the tirade, ready in his mouth, died. He was suddenly exhausted, looking at the dark circles underneath Dimitri’s eyes, his sweaty temples, the expression on his face. Felix couldn’t read it, and he was tired, of whatever it was that was happening with Dimitri. 

“Just go,” Felix said, feeling numb. 

“Are you mad?” Dimitri said, scooting up so his back was straight. 

“Yeah,” Felix said, half-heartedly. It was hard to look at Dimitri directly. Felix wished this day had never started, that he wasn’t feeling whatever he was feeling right now, the emotion sitting ugly and low in his stomach. 

Dimitri was confused. This was easy to tell. He was staring hard at Felix, waiting for Felix to relent and explain. 

“I don’t know,” Felix said, finally. “Leave whenever.” And he threw his bag on the ground and took off out the door, for the woods. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i realize i'm just shoving characters in that i love.........


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dmfx revival time baby

Felix was in a terrible mood for the rest of the week, which he was aware of, but didn’t know how to fix. 

“Alright, what’s going on with you,” Lysithea said, after Felix did the problem wrong five times in a row, and was pressing pen to paper entirely too hard. 

“Nothing,” Felix said, rummaging mutinously through his bag for more scratch paper. 

“Why are you suddenly bad at math, then,” Lysithea said, crossing her arms. 

Felix’s eye twitched. 

“You’re supposed to answer the question,” Lysithea said, snottily. She was wearing a pink fuzzy sweater that made her look deceptively docile. Felix knew that underneath the sweater was a pencil she wouldn’t hesitate to stab him with. He respected it. 

“I’m never bad at math,” Felix said, and then pointed at one of her graphs. “You’ve labeled the axis wrong.” 

“It’s log scale,” Lysithea said, raising one eyebrow at him. 

Felix took a sharp breath through his nose. It was obvious to him what was wrong, but to admit that something was wrong was to put his foot on the next stair and find it missing. If he kept still and tried not to move, maybe he would never have to feel the uncomfortable drop in his stomach that came with miscalculation, and the look on Dimitri’s face before Felix had turned face and run. 

“You’re right,” Felix said, and then decided that it was none of his business what Dimitri did, and he had ascertained that by removing him from Felix’s business, once and for all. 

*

It occurred to Felix around the three-month mark of knowing Hilda that he didn’t know what her major was. 

“Can you hold up your phone for me,” Hilda said, folding herself neatly into the seat behind Felix in the lecture hall. Felix always showed up ten minutes early to claim a seat next to the aisle, and had started accidentally leaving his jacket on the seat behind him. No reason. Hilda handed him the jacket with an expectant look. 

“No,” Felix said, and then did it anyway, so she could fix her lipstick with minimal complaint. If Felix looked very, very hard he could tell she was wearing it. That was the point, Hilda had patiently explained to him before. 

“By the way,” Felix said, watching Hilda use her pinky to wipe the corner of her mouth with something alarmingly approaching affection, “What’s your major?” It was hard to explain Hilda’s presence in his life. She had knocked the door down in lecture that very first day, and had popped up cartoonishly everywhere Felix turned. 

Hilda tilted her head to the side. “Math, duh.” 

Felix stared at her. 

“Stop, I’m sorry, your face,” Hilda said, and dissolved into a laugh that made Felix shrink into his seat with a glare. 

She was still laughing three minutes into lecture. Felix refused to give any indication that he noticed what she was doing, because he was a good student. When Hilda had finally stopped shaking, she tapped him on the shoulder. 

“What,” Felix said, out of the corner of his mouth. 

“I lied,” Hilda said, affecting the fake-contrite tone that Felix hated. She sounded like she was playing an orphaned street beggar in a holiday musical. Felix hated it so, so much. “I’m a political science major. But don’t worry Felix, I’m doubling in math!” 

“Great,” Felix said, so loudly that Lorenz turned around to shush him from two rows up. 

*

Felix was impossibly restless lately, and had relocated reluctantly to the library, where he could pace back and forth to the water fountain and back, and up and down the stairs. The library went deep into the ground, layer after layer of increasingly musty stacks of books, gold lettering long dulled. He half-expected to find Lysithea buried somewhere as he descended further and further down. He hadn’t opened his textbook yet. 

“Someone needs to go run,” someone said to him, in a carrying whisper. 

Felix whirled around to find Ingrid tucked in between two enormous bookcases on a squashy armchair, laptop balanced on her knees. 

“Hi,” Felix said, feeling like a spooked cat with every hair standing upright. 

“Hello, Felix,” Ingrid said. “The exit is that way.” She pointed up at the sign. 

“Thanks,” Felix said, and then blurted out, “Do you remember when you had that crush on Glenn?” He didn’t know why it had suddenly floated to the forefront of his mind  — the nightmarish period in middle school when he had realized with dawning horror the strange gravity Glenn had started exerting on all of his friends. 

“As if I could forget, with you and Sylvain bringing it up constantly. What’s up with you?” 

“Nothing,” Felix said, caught wrong-footed. 

“If you’re here, we might as well go to eat,” Ingrid said, hiding a yawn at the end. 

Felix shrugged. 

Fifteen minutes later and several echoing stairways later, and they were out the door, Ingrid winding a trailing red scarf around her neck. 

“How is Glenn?” Ingrid said, politely, turning in the direction of the market. It was fall proper now, dry leaves rattling in the trees as night fell around them. 

“Good,” Felix said. Ingrid hummed. It always ended up like this with Ingrid. They were both so tightly wound that it was easy to fall into a guarded silence. They had learned this after the eightieth squabbling fight, when Felix had read her diary, or told her to get a boyfriend, or overstepped a line between them that he could now see neon from a thousand miles away. 

Felix watched the streetlights blink on and wondered why he thought so much lately about the going-ons of their childhood, the things he had never paused to consider until now. 

“Let’s get sandwiches,” Ingrid said, visibly lighting up when the deli came into view. 

Felix trailed after her, picking his way through the wobbly tables and students hunched over their glowing laptops in the window, past the counter and the register, until Ingrid sighed and handed him half her enormous pastrami monstrosity, piled high with sprouts and tomatoes and an inch of meat. 

“Where are you today? You’re out of it,” Ingrid said, taking an enormous mouthful and chewing thoughtfully. 

“School,” Felix said, and waved his hand, to imply a myriad of things, and nothing specific at all, was making him feel like he needed to scrub off the top five layers of his skin in the shower. 

Ingrid paused eating to look at him. “Nothing to do with how Dimitri’s moping?” 

Felix jerked his head, irritation cresting. Leave it to Dimitri to broadcast relentlessly something Felix was tiptoeing around like a fresh scab that one jostle would leave ripped open and bloody once more. He took a defensive bite of Ingrid’s sandwich, and almost gagged, eyes watering. It was inhuman to eat this much pastrami. It was like biting through clay. 

He pushed the paper plate back towards her. “Leave it.” 

“I’m not getting involved,” Ingrid said, picking up Felix’s half of the sandwich. 

Felix squinted suspiciously at her. Through every minor scuffle and full-blown fight, Ingrid had always stood squarely between Felix and Dimitri, or Felix and Sylvain. It was easy to picture her even now, eyebrows pinched and lips pursed, lecturing them sternly. 

“Are you going to get anything?” Ingrid said ten minutes later, polishing the last of the horrible pastrami. 

“No,” Felix said. It was fully dark now, and the deli was slowly emptying. 

Ingrid bought him a turkey club anyway, and another pastrami sandwich for herself. On the walk back, Felix’s stomach churned, half hunger and half something else. It wasn’t until he was sitting on the edge of his bed, thinking through the tasks for tomorrow, that it struck him. How in a few short months, Ingrid had grown in a different direction than the one he had always seen her pointing towards, like she was following a different sun. 

*

Something that Felix had always appreciated about Dimitri was that his hair was very, very blond. Ever since they were young Felix had been able to locate Dimitri a crowd away, his page cut a white-blond beacon. It had darkened with age to gold, and then shrunk, after Dimitri realized he didn’t want to look like a medieval courtier into his teens. But it was that same blond nonsense. 

He was also tall now, in addition to being blond, and also beautiful. Every head within viewing radius of him turned towards him. Felix felt like a deranged field biologist, sensing Dimitri on the wind or knowing he was around the corner, but he knew it all the same. 

Felix was making his way determinedly through the onslaught of class-changing crowds when he looked up and saw that golden head like a lighthouse. Dimitri was engrossed in conversation with a gaggle of people, Claude and Hilda among them, standing underneath a magnificent maple tree lit up in red. Felix looked for a proprietary hand on Dimitri’s arm, or maybe a subtle lean into his broad chest, or an over-adoring gaze - and came up with nothing. Had Dimitri gotten rid of his latest boyfriend already? 

Now that it had come to his attention, something uncomfortable was squirming in Felix’s stomach, and something heady too. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Dimitri’s latest ex. Had it really been during move-in, all those months ago? Dimitri certainly hadn’t shown up like a despondent stray at Felix’s doorstep to inform Felix of the latest break, but they didn’t exactly have that sort of relationship. In high school, Dimitri had often looped through several relationships before Felix had even noticed or cared. What did Felix care of the births and deaths of insects? 

The more Felix thought about it -- long after he walked quickly past them and prayed Hilda wouldn’t make a scene, after he sat distracted for an hour in his next lecture, and then the one after that -- the more he was convinced that Dimitri really wasn’t dating someone right now. It shocked him anew, even after witnessing the series of shocking, un-Dimitri-like activities Dimitri had taken upon himself to do. It was a childish thing, to associate one-to-one that Dimitri would have a partner, and Felix be alone. But Felix had done it all the same, maybe ever since their ill-fated childhood relationship. 

So Felix decided that the strange feeling in his stomach was discomfort, and would go away after he adjusted to this new normal. Maybe the next time Felix saw Dimitri, Dimitri would have solved the problem on his own and gotten a new bright-eyed person to pat him on the head. 

*

Felix was in the middle of a punishing run, lungs burning with the effort of taking in increasingly frigid air, when his phone began playing the beginning of a pop song. If he had even a second of lung capacity to spare, he would have sworn out loud. As it was, he staggered to an ungainly walk, nearly tripped on a large piece of gravel, yanked his phone out of his armband, and found that Hilda had somehow set a custom text tone that was nearly a minute long. 

She had texted, “Are you free?” 

Felix left her on read, and stared silently up at the sky. It was a beautiful orange. 

His phone started singing again. Hilda had sent a room number, and a long text that boiled down to it would be “fun.” Felix was a brisk thirty minutes away from Garreg Mach, and his entire body was covered in a tacky layer of sweat. He looked up over the treeline again, and wondered whether Dimitri would be there. If Felix saw him today, this would still probably be the longest time in their entire lives that they hadn’t talked in. “Probably.” Felix kicked a spray of gravel, watching the little stones disappear into the grass. It was definitely the longest time they had gone without speaking. 

Felix put his phone on silent, and made it back to his room in twenty. 

Felix felt wrung out by the time he had showered and walked the five minutes to Hilda’s room. The adrenaline from running still had him buzzing, but it had been overtaken with a different anxiety that made Felix feel like he was fighting an invisible current with every step. 

He was raising a hand to knock on Hilda’s door when it swung open. It was Claude. Felix considered following through with the motion for a split second, and then let his hand drop. 

“Hey, Felix!” Claude said, looking suspiciously pleased to see Felix. “Dimitri’s not here, sorry.” 

“I wasn’t looking for him,” Felix said, which was neither the truth nor a lie. He took a moment to hate himself for feeling like Sylvain. 

“Oh, I was just saying, because I know you’re good friends,” Claude said, and lingered strangely over the words, watching Felix intently. 

Felix stared at him. It was overwhelming, the feeling that he wanted something from Felix, something that he wouldn’t ask for. 

“What Claude was saying is welcome and come in,” Hilda said, appearing from behind Claude to yank Felix in over the threshold. 

“Sure,” Felix said, and then braced himself for whatever storm was coming. 

“Have a drink,” Hilda said, and then turned around to ask someone else to pour it for him. Felix snorted. Hilda was just dependable like that. The sun would always rise in the east and set in the west, and Hilda Valentin Goneril would ask it to do what suited her best if she could. 

“It’s okay,” Felix said, gently taking the glass and setting it gingerly on the counter. “I don’t drink.”

“Oh,” the girl said, and seemed at a loss. She had the largest eye-bags Felix had seen since starting college, her gaze downcast. 

“Marianne,” Hilda called, ushering Lysithea in the door, “Give him the juice.” 

Marianne opened Hilda’s tiny fridge and handed Felix a juicebox. 

“Thanks,” Felix said, and resigned himself to it. 

“So,” Claude said, appearing at Felix’s elbow. “Another math major, huh?” 

Felix could feel the pounding headache gathering right behind his forehead. “Yup.” He popped the p. 

“Cool, cool,” Claude said, watching Felix over the rim of his glass. Felix glared. 

“Don’t mind me,” Claude said, tracking Felix’s gaze with an airy laugh. “Just curious, since Dimitri mentions you.”

Felix was actively trying not to crush the juicebox in his fist. “Sure.” It always came around back to Dimitri, no matter what Felix did. It made his ears flare hot when he thought about Dimitri thinking about Felix and telling his new friends about Felix. 

“Man of few words,” Claude said, raising his glass to him. He was an interesting character, Felix thought, watching Claude’s eyes dance. Dimitri was an open book. All of his tormentous thoughts or petty grievances or simple joys beamed out of his face. He was a public radio station that everybody could tune into. 

“So,” Felix said, and then wished for a second he was a drinker, so that maybe the words would come willingly to the tip of his tongue, “What are you involved in, at Garreg Mach?” 

“Nothing much,” Claude said, and then launched into a laundry list that seemed like very much to Felix. He was involved in student council. He was interested in foreign student outreach, and expanded language curriculum. He was majoring in political science and statistics and minoring in math. He was on the school’s archery team. Had Felix ever heard of them? No, it made sense that he hadn’t; Claude had just started the archery team that year, and was looking for club members. Did Felix have any interest in archery? No, he was a runner. Oh right; they had run into each other in the woods. Did Felix run in the woods every day? 

By the time Claude had said everything he had wanted to say, Felix was done with his juice, and the dull throb had evolved into a piercing lance of pain that was spearing through the center of Felix’s skull. There came a knock at the door. Claude paused, eyes focusing with laser precision over Felix’s left shoulder. 

“Dimitri!” Claude said, winked at Felix, and pushed past him to open the door. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm rusty!!! also we finally are almost, ALMOST at the premise for this entire fic. talk to me about dmfx or writing process or do writing sprints with me on twitter @hasaknife


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello........ again..........

Felix felt as though all of his nerves had been strung up on a thread and yanked. It was Dimitri, bringing with him a chill that swept through the open door, or was Felix just imagining things? He was suitably disheveled for someone who had come in from the cold, hair a windswept wave over his forehead. Felix stared at him and willed his eyes to pass over Felix like Felix was invisible, for both their sakes. Felix ducked towards the back of the room, fighting the urge to dive past Dimitri and escape to his room, or anywhere that wasn’t here, Hilda’s entirely too crowded dorm party. 

“Claude,” Dimitri said, clapping Claude on the back. He was so freakishly strong that Felix saw Claude hide a wince. He did a good job. Felix would give him points for that. “Hilda.” 

She twirled one of her ponytails and pointed to her cheek. Felix resisted the urge to leap across the room and tell her she looked like a, like a ridiculous fish. Dimitri blushed and leaned down. Hilda looked across the room to where Felix was standing sulkily in the corner and winked. He mimed a cutting motion, to indicate that the next time she came to him for calculus help that he would saw off one of her dyed pigtails without a second thought. 

He watched her mouth move around the curve of Dimitri’s shoulder. He was wearing a paper-thin henley. Claude was watching Felix, eyes glittering, around Dimitri’s other shoulder. Felix’s neck prickled. They were standing right in the open door, one of Hilda’s pink sandals propped up on the door-step, the other on the stone below. 

It was hot and claustrophobic. Felix was standing on top of someone’s discarded scarf with no way of retrieving it to hang up. Someone nudged past Felix to reach for something behind him and he resisted the urge to shove back, like he was six years old and sulking at the edge of the playground.

“Um, sorry, did you want something?” 

“No,” Felix snapped, and then felt bad about it. It was Marianne, who was slouching so aggressively that Felix felt itchy just looking at her. So they were both having a terrible time because of Hilda. The culprit was still twinkling at Dimitri across her room, reaching out a hand to slap him playfully. 

Felix’s throat burned. He shouldered his way towards Hilda’s tiny sink, filled his plastic cup, and drank the entire thing. Her mirror was disgusting. Someone had drawn a dick through the grime. 

He made his way back towards Marianne, who had somehow shrunk another inch into the ground since Felix had left. “Have you known Hilda long?” Felix said, because if he had to look at Dimitri clogging up the doorway for another second he was going to die of the horrible crawling sensation it inspired in his stomach. 

“No,” Marianne said. Felix waited for her to continue. After another beat, when it was clear she wasn’t going to continue, Felix shifted to stand silently next to her. He respected it. 

People were weaving through the gap in Dimitri, Hilda, and Claude’s conversation, thumping Claude on the back or nudging Dimitri as they went. He watched Dimitri throw his head back and laugh. This was, for some reason, the worst. In an evening filled with unfortunate and uncomfortable events orchestrated by someone Felix felt only begrudgingly agreeable towards, the sight of Dimitri’s full-throated laugh made something dislodge and freefall in Felix’s stomach. 

It was rare for Dimitri to be like this. He had always kept things close to him, like he was pushing down all the parts of himself that rose to the surface in favor of the careful blandness that drew others to him like a mirror. If Felix said something particularly cutting, or they had spent an exceptionally wonderful afternoon playing made-up games in the woods behind Felix’s house, or Felix had painstakingly explained an eye-wateringly complicated trigonometry problem to him at the kitchen table around midnight, the blankness might fade and Dimitri would smile freely, a rare sun. Felix had never seen him before like this -- loose and open, from across the room. 

“Get home safe,” Felix said gruffly to Marianne, around what felt like a marble lodged in his throat, and wove towards the entrance. If he ducked his head, Dimitri might not see. If he shot a nasty enough glare at Hilda, she might not shout his name. 

He was a foot away when Claude gently caught his arm and said with a surprised lilt, “Felix!” Like he hadn’t known Felix had been here all along, trying to evaporate and re-form outside this accursed doorway. Felix yanked his wrist out of Claude’s grip and stared fixedly at a spot on his forehead. 

“Felix?” Dimitri said. 

Felix was so tense it felt as though he was going to snap like a twig with the strain of it. “It’s late,” he said, voice coming out higher than intended. “I have something in the morning. Bye.” 

“We were just talking about you!” Hilda said, right next to his ear, and pinched his waist. He glared at her. He could see Dimitri’s red shirt in his peripheral vision, and regretted that he had perfect vision. If he walked forward another step he would be outside. He could feel the cold air against his back. 

It was futile. Felix had never been one to admit defeat, but this was beyond him. Hilda had for some reason decided that today she wanted to witness Dimitri and Felix interacting and under these circumstances, and there wasn’t a person on earth or a force of nature great enough to stop her. 

“Felix!” Dimitri said again. Was it so unusual to see Felix that he had forgotten how to access any other words? Felix turned to him to ask him if two weeks without a boyfriend had sent him into septic shock, looked at Dimitri’s face despite all of Felix’s self-admonishments, and was struck dumb and disarmed by the bright flush of Dimitri’s face. 

He was drunk, Felix reminded himself. Dimitri was a person who drank now, and who had other friends, and who didn’t have another person barnacled to his back for the longest time Felix could remember. This explained the strange look on Dimitri’s face, the softness that lay over his face like a gossamer veil. They were in undiscovered country. 

“So you were saying,” Claude said. Felix’s ears burned. He wanted to leave. Felix could still feel Dimitri looking at him, and he wanted to swat the drunk idiot like a fly. 

“My first relationship,” Dimitri said, and Felix’s nerves, jangling like windchimes in a hurricane, deserted him completely. It sounded like Dimitri was speaking from very far away. 

“Ooooh,” Hilda said, and said some sentences in succession that Felix missed completely, trying to breathe in and out to stop the frantic pounding in his chest. 

Dimitri looked deep in thought. He really shouldn’t drink so much, Felix thought, looking at the blush around his blue eyes. “It was Ingrid,” he said finally. 

Felix watched his mouth form the words, and heard him say them. It took another second for them to register, and then another second after that for Felix to grasp that the horrible chasm that had opened inside of him was an emotion too terrible for him to name. In another second, Felix propelled himself finally across that door frame and into the frigid night. 

*

Felix thought of himself as human. He functioned, he felt, he lived through his days. Careening back to his dorm from Hilda’s, it felt as though he had never felt anything before this. His throat felt woolen with it, his knees were shaking. He looked down at his chest. It was still as normal, and not how it felt, like it had been hollowed out completely and replaced with a seething yearn. 

It took five tries for Felix to push his key into the lock and turn it. By the time he stumbled, body trembling with effort, into his room, he felt abruptly absurd. What did he care? He got to the end of the thought and the feeling roared back so loudly that Felix put a surprised hand over his heart, to feel its heavy pound. 

He dropped into his bed and wished for death to take him in the night. 

*

He woke up the next morning desperately dehydrated and with a pounding headache, which was so unfair that Felix wanted to yell at the cruelty of it all. He hoped that whatever bed or whatever doorstep Dimitri was sleeping on left him with a backache that would plague him for the rest of his life. Just the thought of Dimiri was enough to drop Felix’s headache into dangerous territory, and the pit of emotion re-opened up in Felix’s stomach. 

He smacked his fist against the wall, which hurt, and cursed. 

“Felix?” Sylvain said, knocking on the door. “Are you hungover in there?” 

Felix breathed in deeply through his nose, held it for as long as the stuffiness in his chest would allow, and let it out. Showing weakness in front of Sylvain was like asking for it to be stamped permanently in his frontal cortex and dragged out in every subsequent conversation. Felix had been a crybaby when he was younger, and he had learned to stop being a crybaby after he met the incorrigible menace that was Sylvain Gautier. 

“Shut up,” Felix said, with feeling, and downed a glass of water before he let Sylvain in. Better to exchange a problem for a problem Felix had spent most of his life learning the work-arounds and particulars of. 

“Heard you went out last night,” Sylvain said, immediately spreading out over Felix’s bed like the shameless idiot he had always been. Felix ground his teeth at the sink, brushing his teeth way too hard. Everyone at this school had an extra mouth that spewed nothing but useless drivel. 

Felix spat his toothpaste out. “So what?” Better to let it out, like ripping a bandage off. Even as he said it, he thought of the way Dimitri had looked in the light in the doorway, and had to grip the edge of the sink as his chest caved in. 

“It’s just not like you, is all,” Sylvain said. When Felix looked back at him, he was sitting upright, and staring at Felix with an alarmingly pensive expression on his face. 

“What do you even know about me,” Felix said, in panic. “Shut up.” He turned towards the sink to hide his face and had to look at his own in the mirror there, pale and tense. 

Sylvain was silent for a moment, as Felix stared at himself and berated the white-faced person staring back at him to stop whatever was happening, immediately. 

“I know you have a raisin instead of a heart, to treat your childhood hero in this way,” Sylvain said, and Felix let out a breath he had been trying not to hold. So many things seemed so desperately out of reach to Felix lately, but Sylvain, who had always been one step ahead of Felix, two grades ahead, and two streets away, would always remain comfortingly so. 

*

Felix tried in the next week to separate himself from Dimitri-related emotion. He imagined it like a tar plastered to the insides of his throat and stomach, and imagined methodically scraping it out. He would then see something in the world that reminded him of Dimitri, and it would well up again, clogging his throat and burning his eyes. 

He watched Ingrid and Sylvain warily, trying to determine whether they could see the shift for what it was. Probably not. He hoped not. Ingrid was spending more and more time in areas beyond Felix’s own, and he only saw her in passing in conjunction with Sylvain. 

Lysithea was wholly uninterested in Felix’s emotional problems, and so Felix spent a lot of time huddled with her in the student center, squabbling over their math homework. 

When they had been kids, they had played nonsensical animal games as all kids did, and Felix had never once considered himself a soft-bellied rabbit or deer. He felt like one now, half his senses permanently assigned to scanning the horizon for Dimitri, primed to run and curl inwards to protect his stomach. 

“What are you looking for?” Lysithea said, annoyed. “If you don’t want to be here, you can just leave.” 

She was pouting, but would deny it until her last breath. “Nothing,” Felix said, and forced himself to focus, and focus again, and again, and again. 

*

Felix had failed at avoiding Dimitri last time, and had gotten a body full of tar that felt as though it was going to seize up at the thought of Dimitri in return. This time, he would be more thorough, and would avoid both Hilda and Claude as well. 

Hilda, as was her way, had somehow doubled her efforts to subvert Felix’s dearest desire. Instead of coming to lecture late once a week to sit behind Felix and pelt him with whispered comments, she had started arriving to every class on time. 

“Why are you ignoring me?” Hilda said, standing in the lecture hall doorway. It was fifteen minutes before lecture started. Felix could see one single person beyond Hilda’s head who was seated in the front row, fast asleep. 

“I’m not,” Felix said. It came out as a grunt. 

“Um, yes you are,” Hilda said. She seemed even pinker than usual, like the few days away from her that Felix had received had lowered his tolerance significantly. 

“Why did you ask then?” Felix said, and stepped neatly around her. 

“Validation,” Hilda said, whirling around with her hands on her hips. Felix looked at the expression on her face and found himself vaguely alarmed. It was the angriest and most serious he had ever seen her. The perpetual mischievous glint that she wore like a badge was gone. 

“Okay,” Felix said, because he was flaring in response, sick of it all. He hated that Hilda had become friends with Dimitri, hated that Dimitri was now his sorest spot, and hated that Dimitri had- that he had-

“Okay,” Hilda said, high and mocking. Her voice turned hard. “We’re friends, Felix.” 

Felix stared at her, and let out a “Ha!” that sounded flat even to him. “Go tell Dimitri that.” 

Even saying his name was hard, Felix found, feeling something inside him shake. 

“I’m friends with Dimitri, and I’m friends with you,” Hilda said slowly, like she was explaining the concept of sharing to a toddler. 

Felix snorted. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but-” 

“Oh you don’t know,” Felix snapped, derision burning his mouth. “I don’t want to play your games. Cut it out.” 

“It’s not a  _ game _ ,” Hilda said, frowning at Felix like he was the one sticking a foot shamelessly across every line. 

“If you’re going to do this, don’t be surprised when people don’t want to be your _ friend _ ,” Felix said, spitting the last word, and stomped past her to sit in his normal seat, shaking with anger. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the girls are fightingggg but thank you for reading. it's been six months since i last updated so if you're reading this - thank you :D !


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